Unmasked
by LoyaulteMeLie
Summary: An extension of the scenes in 'Affliction' where Captain Archer discovers that it's not just appearances that can be deceptive.


**Star Trek and all its intellectual property belongs to Paramount/CBS. No infringement intended, no money made.**

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Author's Note 1: Thanks to Ken for the legal advice, sound as always!

Author's Note 2: This scene is one I've touched on before, but I was watching it the other day and thinking how much the Archer of Series 4 had changed from the Archer of Series 1. So I just thought I'd do a few pages of it from his point of view.

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The chime at that moment is the sweetest sound Jonathan Archer has ever heard.

He has no idea how long he's been trying to immerse himself in work, trying to kill time – the time his ship's physician may not have. Trying to wait, with all the patience he can muster (and patience has never come easily to him) for his XO and his chief comm. officer to succeed in retrieving even a scrap of information from the freighter's black box.

There may not be much on it. He already knows that. Possibly, as Malcolm suggested, it may have been wiped – a safeguard in case the information it contained fell into the wrong hands. But he trusts his crew, and if anyone, anyone at all, can get something out of that piece of scrap metal, it will be T'Pol who'll find the way. Then Hoshi, with her facility for languages, can string together whatever can be found, and somehow, _somehow_, they'll get a clue as to what to do next, with the whole damned universe to search in.

"Come!" He stands up even as the door opens, too eager for news even to pretend he's not praying for them to have found something they can all work on.

He knows from the first look at their faces, though, that the news is bad. Disappointment hits him so hard in the stomach that it feels like he's been physically punched; he's used to his officers and crew being able to work miracles, and, unfair as it is, he feels a pang of angry dismay that they've failed. He dismisses this with a deliberate effort – there can be no doubt that the two of them have done everything they possibly could.

'Nothing' is bad enough. But he's worked with them long enough to know at once that 'bad' is going to be followed by 'worse', and he braces himself.

T'Pol's expression is shuttered. Hoshi ... well, Hoshi looks like she's just heard one of her family had died.

Neither of them really wants to be here. Definitely, there's something neither of them wants to tell him.

Finally, the Vulcan takes the plunge, her voice level. "The recording was erased deliberately."

Archer dares to breathe a little easier. Has she forgotten? "Malcolm said there might've been a safeguard."

They've brought a small device, and laid it on the desk in front of him.

"The memory core was wiped by that microdyne coupler."

He stares at Hoshi, and then at the coupler. He's seen one before, and the fact that they have this one suggests inexorably that it belongs to his ship.

_Belongs to his ship._

There seems to be less moisture in his mouth than there was a moment ago. "You're sure."

Is pity an emotion? T'Pol's eyes are beautiful, but he can't read their expression. "It left a unique magnetic signature."

Hoshi speaks again, as though she's gritting her teeth with the effort of getting the words out. "We found it in storage locker C-14. The last person to access that locker was Lieutenant Reed."

=/\=

He wants to think, but there isn't time. He wants to understand, but his compass has lost magnetic North.

A part of him wants to kill.

He wishes that he'd let Reed's oxygen run out, that time he was pinned on the hull by a Romulan mine. He wishes it was Reed, not Hayes, whom he'd sent onto the Reptilian ship to bring Hoshi back and die.

He needs more time, time he doesn't have. He needs time to get his shock and anger under control. He's the captain, he's supposed to be impartial. There may be – there _must_ be! – some explanation for what's happened here.

With a voice that doesn't sound like his own, he orders T'Pol to return to the Bridge and check the findings from the scan of the weapons signature on the freighter. In the same measured tone he thanks Hoshi for trying, and asks her to make a start on putting together her submission for the official report. For report there will have to be, and he knows past any doubt that it's going to get ugly.

T'Pol takes hardly a couple of minutes before she returns, her expression somber. "I checked the analysis, Captain. It returned a result of Klingon disruptor fire. So did the pieces of hull retrieved along with the black box, despite Lieutenant Reed reporting that he had identified these as carrying an Orion weapons signature."

Unless the picture changes – drastically, and in some way he can't even begin to imagine right now – then Malcolm Reed is going to be facing a Court Martial.

Phlox is a healer, not a fighter; though the captain has seen on one previous occasion that the doctor is capable of harshness, it sits uncomfortably on him. Mostly all he wants to do is give his patients the best care he can, and the one member of the crew who's benefited most often from that kindly care is the guy who for some inexplicable reason has sabotaged the desperate rescue mission.

The sheer ingratitude feeds Archer's wrath like gasoline poured on a fire, but for the time being he contains it. For the time being.

His own officer has almost certainly tampered with evidence – the only piece they have that could help them track down their doctor, who could be anywhere and in any kind of trouble right now. He's given false statements, destroyed government property (indirectly that of the Rigelian government, who will want the freighter's fate investigated) and lied to his commanding officer. These actions constitute treason, which theoretically still carries the death penalty.

The defense counsel will demand whether he verified that information for himself or simply accepted his XO's word as gospel. The damned defense counsel will probably never have met a Vulcan in the flesh, but Archer isn't about to give them the opportunity to imply any possible mistake; he has her transfer the information to his computer, where it stares up at him every bit as plainly as it must have stared up at Malcolm Reed as they'd all gazed aghast at the Rigelian freighter with its cargo of new corpses. Then, painstakingly, they go down together to the labs, where she runs the scanner over the blackened fragments of hull that were raked by what's now incontrovertibly proven to be Klingon weapons, set to deliberately destroy.

An explanation. There – must – be – an – explanation. And for Reed's sake, it had better be a damn good one, or the guy just might not live long enough to face a Court Martial.

"Do you wish me to be present, Captain?" she asks, as they take the turbo-lift back up to the Bridge, where the traitor and saboteur is still sitting at his station, diligently pretending to be a loyal member of the crew.

Archer shakes his head, though he suspects it might actually be better to have an impartial witness present. But what is there that he _can_ be sure of now, in a world where the Brit with a rock-ribbed sense of honor has deliberately given him information he knew to be false and then acted to make sure that the facts the black box contained can never be retrieved?

The Vulcan puts out an elegant hand and activates the emergency stop. "Captain," she says evenly, "as your XO I have to point out to you that your current course of action is potentially illegal."

He spares her a glance, filled with bitterness. "You think I don't know that?"

_You think I can stop to waste time thinking about the law, when Phlox's life may be in danger?_

"However grave your suspicions may be about Lieutenant Reed's activities, sir, you should follow the legal procedures laid down in military law," she continues earnestly. "If you interview him without legal counsel or due process, you undermine any proceedings that may follow. Whatever information you may obtain will be inadmissible in court, and any defense counsel would seek for the prosecution to be dismissed on those grounds alone – more than likely, with success.

"Not only that, but your own conduct would be called into question. You yourself could be charged with failing to respect your own officer's legal rights."

She's telling him nothing but the truth, and entirely for his own good. And as unsparingly honest as she is, and as accurate as her bleak summation may be, he can't heed it.

He may be crossing a legal line by what he's about to do. He may even be endangering his own career. But to follow due process right now is to put Phlox's survival in jeopardy, and that's something he won't do for any consideration of his own safety, or even to make sure that Reed gets his just deserts.

Before the Expanse, he would never have reacted with such violence, such anger. It taught him lessons, not many of them good ones. It's too late to unlearn them now just to have a traitor protected by the law.

"Give me a few minutes and then send for a MACO," he says grimly, starting the ascent again. "And have him wait outside the door."

She doesn't ask why. It's too painfully obvious.

The door to the Bridge hisses open. The quick, scared turn of Hoshi's head is too obvious, adds to the stink of fear. Travis clearly hopes for news, but the brief light in his face dies at the look on his captain's.

The only one who doesn't look up is Malcolm. The only one who has something to hide.

Archer has to swallow twice before he can speak in anything approximating a normal voice. "Mister Reed, in my Ready Room please."

You have to admit it, the guy can act. He rises as calmly as though this was any other occasion, and dutifully calls a deputy to take over the Tactical Station till he returns. Like he actually thinks he _is _going to return – like he thinks he's going to get away with lying to his CO and tampering with a vital piece of evidence, like he believes his treachery's never going to be uncovered!

The captain swings away from him and makes his way into his Ready Room, tight-lipped. He sits at his desk quickly, wanting to get the protection of his desk between him and his traitor of a Tactical Officer – though protection for whom, or against what, he couldn't truthfully have said. The possibility that he may actually be in danger from one of his own officers is simply too incredible for him to contemplate, but it seems that once one certainty has gone out the window, the ground of all the rest is shaky underfoot.

The chime sounds only a moment later; Reed never dawdles.

"Come!"

He walks in, and you'd never know from his look of polite enquiry that he has so much to fear from this interview. T'Pol had commented that it was strange that he'd made no effort to get rid of the evidence altogether; he simply hid it where the ship's sensors could find it quite easily, when he could have disposed of it in any one of a dozen ways and nobody would have been any the wiser. But that's something the captain will have to think about some other time, because right now he has to deal with an enemy – there can be no other word, until or unless some exonerating explanation comes to light – who's wearing an _Enterprise_ flight suit and a lieutenant's rank pips.

"I guess you know we didn't get anywhere with the black box," says Archer, as the Englishman comes to a halt at parade rest in front of the desk.

"That's unfortunate, sir." Even his tone is unrevealing. A little mild regret, perhaps, but he'd said this might happen.

Just before he _made_ it happen.

"It seems – so T'Pol informs me – that the material on it was deliberately erased. With this." He removes the coupler from his pocket and shoves it across the table. "One of our own devices. Maybe _you_ can tell us something about this."

Reed looks down and picks it up. For the first time, a faint frown appears on the carved pallor of his face. "I'm not quite sure what you're getting at, sir."

_Aren't you, you lying little son-of-a-bitch? Then I'll make myself clearer. _ The captain's too angry to sit still; almost without knowing it he rises to his feet. "Only someone with security clearance of Alpha-4 or higher had access to the black box. That's just T'Pol, you and me."

He waits for the collapse. It doesn't come.

"I agree. It is … a bit of a mystery." There's even an artistic hint of perplexity in the English voice, damn its owner to hell!

So_. Let's try another angle. And start letting the doubt, the derision show through._ Too disgusted by listening to the easy lies to even watch them continuing, he walks slowly past his tactical officer. "You're sure that freighter was destroyed by Orion weapons?"

It's a query of Reed's professional competence. He answers firmly, just as he would if he were the honest guy he always pretended to be. "There's no doubt."

Archer shuts his eyes for a moment and then turns, just in time to catch the lieutenant' slip away almost as though he's ashamed of his own lies. "I asked T'Pol to double-check your analysis." He prowls around to watch the despair appear, and continues after a moment to let it take hold. "The freighter was fired on by Klingon disruptors." _As a first-year cadet could have told me, if they weren't lying to me for their own goddamn reasons._

Even now, Reed's defiance endures, in spite of everything. "With all due respect, sir, it must have been a mistake."

_**Whose**__ mistake, Mister? T'Pol's? Yours? Or mine, when I brought you aboard my ship in the first place? _

Archer tries to hold on to his even tone, but the note of the curb chain is audible when he growls out, "I've seen the sensor logs."

"Someone could have tampered with them."

The reply is too quick, too desperate, too pat. Reed knows this has been coming and has no defense that's even remotely plausible. The sheer audacity of his continued charade of innocence ignites the captain's temper, though he makes a last attempt to keep a grip on it, to give a guy he's always thought of as a friend as well as a valuable officer one last chance to step across the gulf that's now yawning between them like a grave – the grave into which every atom of regard he had for the Englishman is about to fall.

He stares in incredulous wrath and disgust at the white, almost despairing face opposite him. Of all the people on his ship, of all his staff, this was the one man he'd have believed incapable of such treachery, such perfidy. He'd have staked his life on it.

Finally he speaks, his near-whisper more threatening than any shout could have been. "I want to know what the hell's going on."

Silence.

Next moment, after a brief but agonizing pause, Reed's whole body language shows his retreat into total non-cooperation. His eyes, that until now have made some effort to hold his captain's, snap forward into blank formality.

"_Answer me, Lieutenant!"_

The gaze is dragged up again briefly, and is now filled with an anguish you'd swear was genuine if you didn't know better. The stiff lips part, but only to utter the dogged words of a man taking refuge in the law that protects criminals: "Respectfully, sir, I refuse to answer any more questions."

He extends his hand that still holds the coupler, surrendering it.

That's a mistake; under pretence of accepting the device, Archer seizes the wrist behind it, gripping it as painfully as he knows how, and grabs his forearm too, dragging him in close. _"Malcolm!"_

The body beside him is tense, expecting violence perhaps. And maybe if violence could have achieved anything that expectation might have been fulfilled. Instead, Archer delivers the blow of his unbearable hurt and fury in a way that he can only hope will deliver its full payload somewhere beyond that armored front: "I never would've believed that _you_, of all people…"

He can't go on. He releases the man as though the touch of him soils his hands.

No response. Reed stares straight ahead, like a dead man who doesn't fall over.

The captain walks to the door, which opens to reveal the MACO he requested. "Corporal. Lieutenant Reed's been relieved of duty. Escort him to the brig and confine him."

The armed MACO nods dutifully, his face expressionless.

Watching would be absolutely unendurable; Trip has abandoned him, and now Malcolm has betrayed him. Archer turns away and stares at the indifferent stars beyond the viewing port as his tactical officer, after a momentary hesitation, turns obediently to be taken into custody.

For an instant, as the lieutenant comes level with him at the door, he pauses. Almost as if he's reconsidering … almost as if he's regretting. But whatever it was, the impulse passes, and he slips away.

Alone in his Ready Room, the captain is left to stare into a past that only existed in his own imagination, and a future that will be lonelier than he ever thought possible.


End file.
